N.J. Schools Put Reform To the Test

When the New Jersey Supreme Court handed down a ruling last spring
requiring hundreds of urban schools to implement wholesale, schoolwide
change by no later than next year, heads turned in the nation's
education community.

Never had a court written--or a state been required to fill--a
prescription for "whole school" reform of anything approaching that
magnitude. In essence, the court was mandating a process from on high
that by all accounts relies heavily on the commitment of those at the
bottom.

Now, nearly a year later, it's still too soon to say whether New
Jersey's unprecedented experiment will succeed.

Yet one thing is clear: Anyone who expected the process to move
smoothly and according to plan has been in for some surprises. In ways
large and small, reform New Jersey-style hasn't quite stuck to the
script.

"There's an intent to do something, and then there are practical
difficulties," said David C. Hespe, who was sworn in two weeks ago as
the state commissioner of education. "We are dealing with an
ever-changing concept here."

As that reality evolves, educators around the country are paying
attention, given the mounting interest in whole-school reform as a
promising but unproven solution to the problems of educating
disadvantaged children. That interest has been fueled by federal
funding that recently became available for the comprehensive redesigns
known by that label.

"I don't think anybody's going to bet the farm on the New Jersey
approach," said Cynthia G. Brown, the director of the Resource Center
on Educational Equity at the Council of Chief State School Officers,
based in Washington. "But they want to see what happens."

Reform Plot Twists

What has happened in New Jersey so far would have been hard to
predict from the game plan laid out in the state supreme court's order
last May.

The ruling came in a long-running lawsuit over state funding of 28
poor urban districts. Earlier orders in the case, known as
Abbott v. Burke, required the state to equalize spending
between those city systems and New Jersey's wealthiest suburbs,
yielding hundreds of millions of additional dollars for the city
schools during this decade. Last year's ruling focused on what programs
were needed to make the extra money translate into achievement gains
for urban students.

Since that decision, controversy and confusion have arisen over the
mismatch between what initially seemed to be in store for the
schoolwide-reform effort and the direction it has taken.

The Education Law Center, the Newark-based legal-aid group that
brought the lawsuit, has gone so far as to charge that the state is
violating the ruling because of those departures. State officials
strongly disagree.

The two sides also differ on how well the reform initiative is
progressing overall. While state officials give it largely positive
reviews, the law center argues that there are serious implementation
problems.

One point both sides agree on, however, is that the potential
payoffs should ultimately be worth the costs.

"This is the first judicially enforced whole-school-reform program
in the country," said David G. Sciarra, the law center's executive
director. That creates the opportunity, he said, "to not just have
reform but to sustain it with adequate funding for years to come."

Commissioner Hespe, who recently took over from Leo F. Klagholz,
said no one should have expected such "a large, large task" to proceed
seamlessly. But, he added, "This offers the best opportunity that the
children in our urban districts have ever had to get the resources they
need."

Presumptive Model?

One highly debated issue has been the shifting approach state
officials have taken toward one of the nation's most popular reform
models, Success for All, and how vigorously they have pushed schools to
adopt it.

The program, developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, is now operating in more than 1,100 schools around the
country. The full-blown version of the program, referred to as Success
for All/Roots & Wings, combines Success for All's elementary-level
literacy program with mathematics, science, and social studies
components called MathWings and WorldLab.

At first, Mr. Klagholz believed that all 319 elementary schools in
the 28 city districts should be required to implement the program. The
then-commissioner later softened his stance, arguing that while Success
for All should be the model of choice, because of encouraging research
on its effectiveness, alternatives should be allowed under limited
circumstances.

The state adopted that position during proceedings leading up to
last year's supreme court ruling, and the court endorsed it. The
decision directed the state to require schools in the Abbott
districts "to adopt some version of a proven, effective whole school
design," with Success for All/Roots & Wings "as the presumptive
elementary school model."

The court said implementation should proceed according to a
three-year schedule proposed by the state that called for 50 elementary
schools in the first cohort of schools, 100 in the second, and the
remaining 169 in the third. Robert E. Slavin, a Johns Hopkins professor
who is the chairman of the Baltimore-based Success for All Foundation,
testified that the foundation that runs the program could accommodate
that schedule.

Under the state plan, the court noted, a school could adopt one of
four other models approved by the commissioner "if it could show
convincingly that the alternative model it chose would be equally
effective and efficient as SFA or that the model was already in place
and operating effectively."

Freedom vs. Force

In practice, urban educators say, the state has given schools free
rein to choose from among the five designs it has endorsed.

State officials say this reflects their recognition that
comprehensive reform will not work if schools feel that a particular
model is, in Mr. Klagholz's words, being "rammed down everybody's
throats."

"You can't mandate it from the top and then expect it to happen from
the bottom," said Barbara Anderson, the state's assistant commissioner
for student services.

Research supports that view. Studies have shown that while reform
designs can produce achievement gains, implementation varies widely,
depending in large measure on the commitment of educators in the
schools. ("Most Edison Schools Report
Rise in Test Scores," April 14, 1999.)

As it turned out, 55 elementary schools signed on for the first
cohort. Joining them were 17 middle and high schools, which are
required to explore whole-school reform but not necessarily adopt
it.

Among the elementary schools, some of which had already been working
with one design model or another, 27 chose Success for All/Roots &
Wings. Of those, nearly half had been implementing at least some
elements of Success for All in prior years.

Eleven elementary schools picked the Community for Learning/Adaptive
Learning Environments Model devised by researchers at Temple University
in Philadelphia, as did 11 middle schools.

One elementary school chose both the Temple model and the Comer
School Development Program, developed at Yale University.

The Comer model on its own claimed 13 elementary and two middle
schools. Two elementary schools chose the Modern Red Schoolhouse
design, and just one selected the fifth state-approved elementary
model, Accelerated Schools.

Mr. Sciarra of the Education Law Center faulted the state for
failing to require schools picking models other than Success for
All/Roots & Wings to prove they would achieve comparable results.
He argues that this has rendered hollow the state's contention that
Success for All remains the "presumptive model."

"They've clearly violated the court order," he said.

Disputing that, Mr. Hespe said it would not make sense to force
schools to produce research showing the effectiveness of the other four
models, given that the state was already convinced of those programs'
promise.

Resistance Reported

As for the second cohort, the state is giving schools until late
spring to say whether they're on board for the coming year. Many
observers report reluctance among schools to commit themselves.

"There's been in general a lot of resistance toward the
whole-school-reform movement," said Rona Halbreich, the New Jersey
regional manager for Success for All/Roots & Wings. "I definitely
see a massive number of schools coming on in the third cohort."

Ms. Halbreich said that, as of now, she expects about 28 new schools
to adopt the model in the second cohort. Representatives of the Comer,
Modern Red Schoolhouse, and Accelerated Schools models each reported
signing up roughly half a dozen new Abbott schools for that
group. A spokesman for Community for Learning could provide no
preliminary estimates.

Despite the reported reluctance, state officials say they still
expect about 100 schools in the second wave, roughly conforming to the
schedule anticipated by the court.

Whether the rest of the districts will have to sign on in Round 3
has recently been thrown into question.

Some city school leaders are lobbying the state to seek court
approval for an extension of the deadline for launching their reforms
beyond the fall of 2000. Mr. Hespe has said he will consider their
position.

Meanwhile, schools in the first cohort have reported some common
problems. One obstacle, educators say, has been the state's failure to
come through with $50,000 grants that schools had been promised for
launching the reforms. State officials blame the holdup on the
legislature's failure to appropriate funds.

Another stumbling block has been the budgets that newly formed
school management teams are required to draw up at all schools
undertaking the reforms. Most of the educators and parents involved had
never had to create school-level budgets before.

Besides such inexperience, conflict and uncertainty over preserving
existing jobs and programs in light of the new priorities have been a
problem. Many schools have asked for more money, but the state insists
instead that they reallocate their resources.

Bari Anhalt Erlichson, an assistant professor of public policy at
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, said her ongoing study of the
reforms' implementation in 40 schools has turned up mixed views among
classroom teachers.

Reservations Expressed

"Many teachers have gotten enthusiastic about particular models,"
she said. "Then there are teachers who feel, 'We have to do it, and I'm
a professional, so I'll do it. But it's not something I'm excited
about.' "

School leaders, too, are ambivalent. Some local board members and
superintendents worry that schools are careering off in different
directions, leaving little instructional coherence districtwide.

Given the high student mobility in urban schools, some
administrators have resolved to push hard for consensus on a single
districtwide model.

And there are those who fear that too many eggs are being put in the
whole-school-reform basket. Deanna Burney, the assistant superintendent
for curriculum and instruction in Camden, worries that a focus on
professional development aimed squarely at improving teaching may
sometimes get lost.

"I can understand the state's thinking in wanting schools to be
accountable for student performance," she said. "But I don't think
there was enough conversation between the state and the districts on
how we can go about doing that."

Some schools are hoping reforms they have already begun--or
home-grown plans they have on tap--will convince the state that they
don't need a state-endorsed design. The state says schools can try to
make such a case, but will bear a heavy burden of proof.

"If scores are going up every year and other indicators are good,
people are saying, 'Why should we turn everything on its head?'" said
Jack DeTalvo, the president of the state's Urban Superintendents
Association and the schools chief in Perth Amboy.

As the state struggles with its paradoxical task of mandating
universal grassroots reform, "states are watching what's happening in
New Jersey very closely," said Lesley A. Dahlkemper, who coordinates
work on comprehensive school reform for the Denver-based Education
Commission of the States.

"Will it work to have the states mandate a small handful of designs,
rather than having the schools select the models themselves?" she
asked.

Federal Aid Eyed

The question has taken on added importance because of the growing
interest in using money from Title I, the $8 billion federal program
that underwrites services for disadvantaged students, to support
comprehensive school change. The nearly $150 million in federal grants
now being distributed to states for such approaches under the
Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program is a step in that
direction.

"New Jersey is the test case as to whether these whole-school-reform
grants are actually a systemic way of addressing the academic and
social needs of Title I students," Ms. Erlichson of Rutgers said.

Mr. Slavin, a strong advocate of using Title I for schoolwide
reform, said that he for one remains convinced that in the end, New
Jersey will show that such an approach can work.

"With all the politics and problems, I remain very optimistic about
New Jersey," he said. "While there's lots of moaning and groaning and
carrying on, most educators realize they have been given a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show what can be done in high-poverty
districts."

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